Hey everyone. Please go check out http://www.thelivebuzz.com/ It’s the new music site of my good friend Nic Harcourt. Travis met Nic when he was the man behind the mic on KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic. Since then he’s been working on this. Enjoy.

I’m flying back to London tomorrow. Mum has been in Berlin this weekend. Clay ran her ragged. She leaves tomorrow too. Me and Nora went to see Toy Story 3 on Saturday. It was very good. I started crying within the first 3 minutes of the movie when Woody reacts to Andy’s voice on the telephone. That is some fantastic animation to imbue so much emotion on the face of a cgi representation of a toy. There were a couple of quite dark passages which I thought would give little kids nightmares. There were toddlers in the cinema who were clearly terrified during these scenes. Parents, don’t you know you’re eroding your kids innocence? That shit is precious… it’s like they have had their own innocence obliterated so much they cannot see properly anymore this pure beautiful soul in front of their eyes. The man sitting next to us had no expression on his face as he told us his 4 year old was very very scared. Gaahh!! Anyways, the film is amazing. Go and see it if you haven’t already.

So Monday thru Friday is looking busy. I am doing a radio show tomorrow on radio 2 at around 5.50/6pm. Simon Mayo. Listen if you want. I have to do a cover. I wanted to do that one by The La’s but it was too obscure. Then I chose a Keane song but that was also not a single… it is for The Great British song thing they are doing. So I had a look at the list of songs which had already been covered and then it came to me in a flash… Superman by Black Lace… Joking… I won’t say what I am covering but it is from 1987 and was a song I really loved that year. 1987. I was 14.

Andy MacDonald is a name not many will know but as an A+R man he has an ear for a certain type of group. Many of the groups he signed had been passed up on or simply overlooked. His first signing was Billy Bragg, he signed The Housemartins (which would spawn The Beautiful South and a decade later ex member Norman Cook would createFatboy Slim) In the late 80’s Andy signed The La’s. They would make one album. I think their singer Lee Maver’s is one of the best songwriters Britain every put out. Here they are in 1989 singing Looking Glass. A good example of lyric and chord welded together perfectly. If the guitar chords could be translated into english you would get the lyrics and vice versa. A work of pure non thought. Amazing.